Dissertations at a Distance: Students’ Perceptions of Online Mentoring in a Doctoral Program

August 13, 2013

The purpose of this research was to identify best practices in online mentoring used in an online doctoral program to mentor doctoral students through their dissertation. During semi-structured interviews, students (n=9) reflected on the challenges faced communicating with their mentors, and the online technologies, online mentoring strategies, and their own best practices that had been instrumental in the successful completion of their dissertations. Themes in the findings that are specific to the online mentoring of dissertations are discussed in the context of prior research on best practices in dissertation supervision in traditional environments.